


Best Laid Plans

by fleet_of_red, kuro49



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cops, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Mild torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 15:57:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18369278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleet_of_red/pseuds/fleet_of_red, https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: When Officer Todd infiltrates a bio-terrorist organization led by Joker, Officer Wilson makes him promise just one thing as his partner on the force: Come back in one piece.Slade is a hypocrite and Jason is a liar.





	Best Laid Plans

Slade can see plenty even when the slit of the faded heavy polyester curtains is narrow and the window he is looking through is streaked with grime and dust. Between the haphazardly parked cars, his eye trails after a kid in a leather jacket that has seen better days darting to cross the street just as the red light turns green for oncoming traffic.

Dark hair, shoulders hunched and sniffing against the cold. It feels like it is all too often that Slade has to remind himself that this kid he is looking at is his partner.

Slade Wilson hasn't carried a badge and a gun for this long without seeing his fair share of the worst of what this city can offer. Even given what he's seen, it always seems to be a cut-throat competition of what could make it worse. In a shitty little motel right on the edge of where the bad side of town turns a corner to much worse, Slade waits for the inevitable in a room he pays for by the hour.

When the lock on the door clicks open, a silent little noise that echoes, it makes Slade frown even if the warning bells are not quite ringing yet.

"I left you a key," Slade points out, knowing the retort before the kid tosses it into the open air between them.

"Didn't need one," Jason tells him with a shrug, holding up two lockpicks to brandish them like they could be weapons. In those hands, they might as well be.

Slade's eye tracks the kid as he walks the short distance with a movement that tells he is packing. If there isn’t one tucked at his waistband, then there is one secured in the holster that is pulling taut across Jason’s shoulders. The only conclusion for Slade to draw, and it is one that doesn’t sit well with him at all, is that Jason must have picked it up somewhere along the way because he definitely wasn’t assigned a firearm from the precinct when this whole special assignment started. Slade isn’t sure which idea he likes less: His partner picking up a gun from an unverified source or the fact that Jason feels the need to have one at all.

"So, what do you need?" Slade asks, dressed down and his badge nowhere in sight.

Even if they are meeting in discrete places, having Jason’s current identity of Red seen with someone in a cop’s uniform would only end badly, and neither one of them is anything but paranoid given what is at stake here.

Red's got a rap sheet almost as long as Slade's arm. Having grown up in a shit neighborhood with shittier parents that turned into dead ones, and then foster care for less than a year before he traded that in for living on the streets all on his own. Whoever wrote the background story for Red doesn’t have much creativity since they essentially lifted parts of Jason’s early childhood verbatim from his academy records. Which, well, Slade supposes certainly makes it easier for Jason not to accidentally slip up during an undercover mission like this one.

From there, the background story diverges from reality with Red lying about his age and joining the military before coming back to his hometown after a tour— explaining both the training and his absence from the Gotham underground scene for the last few years.

Reality is somewhat more fantastical than fiction, with a twelve-year-old Jason Todd getting sponsored by an anonymous, wealthy patron to attend boarding school on the outskirts of Gotham to turn his projected life on Gotham’s streets around. Not letting an opportunity like that slip by, the kid excelled and eventually joined the force, worked his way up from beat cop to become one of the youngest detectives at the Gotham City Police Department.

It’s weird to Slade because he can tell that deep down Jason has a disdain for the GCPD. It’s a damn good thing that the kid despises the drug dealers and criminal lowlifes of Gotham more than her finest. Regardless, Slade’s only requirements for his junior partner include doing his job well and knowing when to shut up. Jason fulfills one of those requirements exceptionally well. Even when he is currently looking more like someone on the wrong side of the law than an officer sworn in to enforce just that, Officer Todd has always been ridiculously good at his job.

Slipping so easily into his undercover role, Jason puts on a mask and it is easy to believe it all at face value. Red has nothing red on him. On another day when he isn’t so riled up, he might entertain a worn red hoodie for the name's sake. But not today, not when he is looking about ready to yank the black locks of his hair right off the top of his head.

"I need a fucking break from this joke of a gig," Jason spits out before dropping down on an armchair in the furthest corner of the room from Slade and the man knows his partner well enough to understand every bit of that is deliberate.

"The boss not paying his minions well enough?" Slade asks with a soft scoff.

Even when they are meeting like this, it’s easier, safer to maintain Red’s cover. And if he’s being entirely honest, there’s something enticing about treating his partner as nothing more than a criminal henchman turned reluctant informant. It’s become almost a game between them, playing their scripted roles as they update each other on the case.

"He pays just fine,” Red answers.

"Bioterrorism tends to," Slade points out. For the longest time, there were only rumors on the dark web of a terrorist group operating out of Gotham led by a man known as Joker. With a moniker like that, it wasn’t a surprise that many at the GCPD considered it a joke— just juvenile posturing from bored basement dwellers online.

Then the attacks started.

The group does not seem to follow any creed nor have they made any demands, and it is this latter point that really unnerves the elites of Gotham who are used to bribing their way out of their problems. No, this terrorist group seems interested in sowing chaos, going after politicians, financial institutions, and the working class alike. From one random act of violence to acid attacks with victims ranging across socioeconomic backgrounds to a series of threats made on live television then carried out with no request for ransom. The only conclusion their analysts can agree on is that their crimes are getting bolder and the scale of the group is growing larger in size.

"So, what about it?" Slade continues when Red isn't forthcoming, taking the downturned corners of Jason’s mouth as a prelude. He goes for his own coat first and drapes it down over the rickety little table next to the television.

"I think I'm getting a promotion," Red tells him, mirroring his motions as he stands up. He drops his leather jacket to the seat and unclasps the holster to get the shirt underneath off as well.

"Congratulations."

They have done this plenty of times before for their movements to be practised.

Slade catches the way Red looks at him from underneath the disarray of his hair and follows his eyes as they trail across the lines of his shoulders to cut sharply down to his waist. He allows himself the same indulgence to linger, hands at his belt, waiting while Red kicks off his boots in order to peel the tight hug of his pants from the length of those legs. Left in just a pair of briefs that doesn't hide much, Red comes over and brushes away Slade's hands from the buckle of his belt.

"No more guard duty," Jason says as he unthreads the length of leather, popping open the button to drag a finger down the cool line of the zipper before undoing that too. "Or bribing security or even cleaning up after a shipment."

"Again," Slade says, tipping Red's chin up to catch his mouth with his. "Congratulations."

The kiss is not bruising or brutal or any of the usual words they would use to describe them when they come together like this. Nonetheless, it is still deeply consuming. And Red sinks into it despite the resistance because he knows this as Slade's attempt at driving him outside of his head.

Not that it stops him from dragging him off and into bed, scratchy sheets at his back and Slade on his knees, looming over him.

"You know what that means, Slade."

"I do."

Slade doesn't want this to be a promise even if it comes awfully close to sounding like one. They both know the implications of becoming an enforcer for Joker. The man doesn't have many lines that he isn't willing to cross, and that goes the same for the men and women he drags into his ranks.

Jason being one of them only raises the stakes.

 

If Jason really wants to retrace his steps to how he ends up here, he could probably go back as far as his teenage years. But a few weeks ago also suffices when he finds himself staring down a woman with brightly-dyed pigtails gesturing wildly to him and the group of men waiting restlessly.

“Mistah J is ready to see you now!”

She has them all following her through a small opening obscured by the rusted skeleton of a school bus, her announcement loud and giddy in a demeanor that is grossly mismatched against the backdrop of the abandoned junkyard she leads them to.

Jason knows that the woman calls herself Harley Quinn and operates as Joker’s right-hand, but beyond that, he isn’t sure what to expect except that this Joker character takes recruitment quite seriously given they have been searched and stripped of anything they can use as weapons before the group of them were left waiting in the cold for the past two hours with no instructions. Most of the men kept to themselves during this time; not exactly the social outgoing type, this group.

The group arrives at a circular clearing surrounded by debris from the junkyard. They can see a man sitting on a stool in the center with his legs crossed, a cheap plastic clown mask obscuring his face.

Perhaps unsettled by the wait and silence, one of the men from Jason’s group steps forward and demands in a low growl. “You him? You the Joker?”

“Ah ah, not yet,” the man with the clown mask wags a reprimanding finger and tsks. “Why don’t you introduce yourselves first?”

It’s eerie to hear the voice coming from behind the stiff, unmoving mask. The group of men glance at each other, clearly puzzled by the request when it is obvious Joker isn’t looking to have them shake each other’s hands.

Jason notices some of Joker’s men rolling large barrels to block the entrance behind them ensuring that a retreat will not be easy. Attention being drawn right back when Harley Quinn bounces to the middle of the clearing and drops a burlap sack onto the ground before them. It flaps open and an assortment of weapons spill out.

Brass knuckles, baseball bats, crowbars, and various knives ranging in sizes from switchblades to an actual sword.

“I believe there’s no better way to get to know your fellow men than a meeting of fists, so to speak.” The masked man throws his head back and laughs. “There’s hardly a more honest moment than when a man’s life is on the line, wouldn’t you all agree with me?”

Oh, fuck. Jason dashes towards the weapons on the ground just as the others comes to the same realization of what this is: A bloody initiation of the bloodier variety. Jason curls his fingers around an aluminum bat while some men don’t bother with a weapon at all, choosing to fight with just their fists instead. He ducks just in time as an arm swings over his head. Behind him, he can hear a shrill scream as a body falls to the ground with a dull loud thud.

Jason turns to see a man with a gash at the back of his head. The body twitching once, then twice, then stops moving altogether. And he would conjure up a proper reaction to a man breathing last breath if given enough time but a thickly built man rushes to tackle Jason from the side, giving him plenty of warning with a loud battle cry. Jason drops down to kick his feet out from under the man, who flies head first into a pile of old tires.

Another man, heavily tattooed, runs towards him while brandishing a knife held tightly in one hand. With the longer reach of the bat, Jason twists his torso to dodge the initial stab and swings the bat down on the man’s wrist, forcing him to drop the knife by just the impact alone. The man wails in pain and curls on the dirt with a string of foreign profanity, but the fight hasn’t left him yet as he reaches for the knife again with his uninjured hand.

A skinny man appears behind the unsuspecting tattooed-man, taking advantage of his vulnerable position. He raises a bloodied crowbar high above his head with both hands and swings down.

—CLANG!

A loud metallic sound rings through the clearing as the aluminum bat collides with the crowbar. Jason swinging the bat up just before the crowbar can come down on his opponent’s head.

“You would’ve killed him,” Jason hisses at the skinny man and shoves back with what is probably more force than necessary when it cause the other to stumble.

“Well, that’s the idea,” the man chortles, a vibrant purple bandana covers the bottom half of his pale face. With his attention now fully turned towards Jason, the skinny man unleashes a flurry of swings, one immediately after the other, with the crowbar still held loosely in one hand.

He might not be as heavily built as the others, but he’s fast and unpredictable. Jason narrowly dodges a blow from the crowbar only for the man to land a fist to the side of his face. I didn’t sign up for this, Jason thinks as his jaw takes the brunt of the impact, pain radiating to the rest of his face.

He parries the onslaught with the bat, using it as both a shield and a club. With the shackles of the law hindering him, it is difficult enough to incapacitate the previous men without outright permanently injuring them— but his current opponent belongs in a different league altogether. Out of the corner of his eyes, he sees the Joker still sitting casually on the stool, drinking in all of this chaos and something a lot like rage boils over. Jason feints a step and instead of continuing to attack, he rushes towards Joker and winds an arm around the man in a choke-hold.

It’s a risky move, but what is one more when he is auditioning through a game of battle royale for the role of being this mad man’s next throwaway henchman.

“Drop your weapons, all of you!” Jason yells, glaring at the stunned faces all around him. “Or I’ll snap his neck!”

On impulse, he twists the mask off Joker to reveal the real identity of this mastermind. The bare face that looks up at him is unexpected: a sniveling wrinkled face, yellowed teeth, and deep pock-marks but otherwise as plain as can be. It sickens Jason to see such a typical looking man stir up so much evil while hiding behind a convenient mask.

“B-b-boss?” The man in his arm gasps in fear.

His voice is drastically different and Jason notices the voice modulator on the mask that is now detached, and well, fuck.

The skinny man laughs and begins a slow applause as though Jason just performed a successful routine at a comedy show and he is in the first row with the best view. He drags the bandana down with a finger to reveal the rest of his face, looking bleached white while the bright red of his mouth stretches out into a crazed smile.

“Like I said, you always learn something about people when you trade blows with them,” he chuckles to himself. “What’s your name, boyo?”

Jason stares at the skinny man in disbelief, dread settling uncomfortably in his gut. Insane is too mild of a description for a terrorist who pretends to be one of the initiants going through a deadly recruitment.

“...Red.” Jason replies wearily, still not letting go of the man in the crook of his arm, though he doubts his hostage has much value if any at all. “It’s Red.”

Joker, the real Joker, turns to Quinn to say: “Harley, be a dear and sign Red up for the next delivery shift. We could do with a man like him.”

The woman pouts at him, not exactly thrilled at the concept of welcoming someone ready to threaten her boss. Yet she knows enough not to question his decisions, no matter how illogical they seem at times. “Sure thing, Puddin’,” she answers before turning to Jason. “You know Crime Alley well?”

“Like the back of my hand,” Jason replies with the confidence of a man who was molded by its streets. And this is an easy thing to step into when it comes as close to the truth as anything he allows.

“Good, meet the crew at Shady Sue’s on the corner of 88th at 11 pm, tomorrow night. You’ll get your first assignment there,” she grins at him, baring all her teeth. “Welcome to the team, Red.”

If all of this didn’t make his skin crawl already, the split of her blood-red lips surely does.

 

Business is slow in the middle of the afternoon, long past the lunch hour rush but not quite time for an early dinner. Slade is the only occupant in the four-seater booth. The waitress comes over and barely arches a brow when he asks for two cups of coffee.

“Let me know if you need anything else, hon,” she says to him when she comes back to drop off two steaming cups.

Slade mutters a thank you to the waitress and proceeds to add cream and sugar to one. He is dressed down, in casual civies complete with a pair of sunglasses to hide his blind eye even if the shades seem out of place in the dim interior of the diner.

“You look like you got stood up by your date.”

Slade glances up to see Jason strolling over from the opposite corner of the diner and dropping himself in the seat across from him. It’s what they do, assess the setting fully before acknowledging each other, walking out without a single exchange if anything is off.

“I think my date made it here just fine,” Slade replies, sliding the coffee with cream and sugar across the table, watching the deliberate way Jason cocks his head. “Just the way you like it.”

Not that this diner serves great or even good filtered coffee but with Jason’s preferences, he might as well order chocolate milk for him next time. And Slade is about to slip in a snide remark about that when he notices the bruise on the side of the kid’s face despite the deliberate angle Jason’s face is half-hidden under the shadow of his cap.

If they are somewhere more private, Slade would reach over with his fingers to tip Jason’s chin up to the light so Slade can actually take stock of the extent of the damage, taking extra care against the bruise. But as it is, they’re both keeping a low profile and he keeps his hands firmly wrapped around his own cup.

“How’d it go?” He asks instead.

“I’m in,” Jason replies, glancing at the rim of the cup before lifting it to take a sip.

“That didn’t take you long.”

Jason has only been undercover less than a week, and neither Slade nor their captain is expecting Joker to come collect their bait this quickly. Concern doesn’t begin to describe the slow crawling sensation of dread that Slade is feeling because either Joker is rushing things or Jason is and neither one of those is good.

“Less time spent with the man, the better.”

“Don’t push too hard.”

“I know how to do my job.”

“That from him?” Slade asks, angling his chin to the deep purpling bruise on Jason’s face.

“Got plenty more from him too,” Jason tells him as he slides over an unsealed envelope across the tabletop to Slade. “Third item down is what I’m collecting but you should get someone to figure out what everything else on this recipe is supposed to be cooking.”

“I can do that.”

Jason downs the rest of the coffee in one go, makes to leave with that simple motion. Slade doesn’t reach out, doesn’t wrap a hand around his wrist for a good reason.

“Don’t take any risks I wouldn’t.”

Jason’s mouth curls into a smirk.

“I’ve still got both my eyes, don’t I?”

 

Perhaps that is the trigger of where it all went to hell, the first mistake in a string of many that led to Slade’s current predicament.

“Wakey wakey, officer!”

A sing-song voice rings in his ears. His sunglasses have been knocked off in the previous scuffle, and his usually concealed blind eye is on full display to the woman in front of him and ain’t she a familiar face.

“It’s detective, actually,” Slade spits out at Harley Quinn, recalling Jason giving him a rundown of all of Joker’s key players starting with her. He is strung up with his arms tied above his head, thick heavy chains on top of ropes and toes only barely touching the ground if he wants to be generous with the situation.

Slade thinks he has a concussion; no, he’s pretty sure he does.

“Well, Detective Actually,” she mocks. “My darlin’ said he’s got more important things to do than wait for you to wake up from your beauty sleep— but don’t ya worry, he’s asked me to make sure you feel right at home before he gets back.”

She swings the baseball bat she has been brandishing this entire time against his side, catching him squarely in the ribs. The impact has him swinging in his confines even if the force is not hard enough to break bones.

“What the fuck do you want?” He manages to ask before she brings the bat down again, this time more than hard enough to bruise.

“Me? Well, I want nothing more than to hit you until candy falls out,” she says, batting her lashes up at him sweetly. “But Joker? Well, he’s got some questions for ya. And just between you and me, his methods are a lot meaner than mine. Not that I could blame him when you happen to get caught like a little rat sniffing around Mister J’s territory.”

Before Slade can retort with something scathing, the bat comes colliding with his temple from his blind spot. The last thing he remembers is the distinctive sound of wood against his torso once, twice, thrice before he blacks out again.

Candy.

Slade thinks of the first time he meets Jason Todd and the sound of hard candy grinding between teeth. The noise may be annoying but even Slade is not above admitting that the sight of those lips being stained bright cherry-red is alluring. He might only have one working eye but he can still see.

“I’m trying to quit,” the newbie tells him like that means anything to Slade.

“Quit what?” Slade asks, flatly, watching as Jason’s eyes lower to the cigarette he is shaking out of his carton, and his lashes are long and thick and Slade wonders what the fuck the captain was thinking when he assigned this kid to him.

Slade Wilson doesn’t do partners. For good reasons after his first one turned into an ex-wife that turned into the reason why he only has one eye. All the ones after that never really last long, and Slade is glad.

“You can crack open a window,” Slade tells him before lighting up.

Jason’s expression is distaste down to the little furrow between his brows. The window to the passenger side lowers while the kid cracks the candy in half between his teeth. Slade doesn’t laugh, not outright, not when he can see the clear clenched line to his new partner’s jaw.

“Not your first time quitting?” Slade asks when they are a couple of blocks from the station.

“Not even the third time,” Jason bites out, the shattered remains of the hard candy in his mouth. The taste of it pungently sweet across his tongue.

“Word of advice, rookie?”

Jason raises an eyebrow because he doesn’t see the veteran detective caring enough to try.

“There are some things you just can’t give up in this line of work.”

It isn’t until well past the third year anniversary of their partnership that Jason learns Slade’s own attempts to quit were well into the double digits before he gave up the pretense of trying altogether. Yet, it was hardly a year into their partnership before Slade invites him home and introduces him to a whole new kind of vice.

It is one night of many, a thoroughly ordinary one that has the two of them settling down on a sofa that has seen much better days. Their beers leave rings of condensation on the surface of the coffee table that Slade never bothered with replacing after his ex-wife left and took her share of the furniture from the apartment. There are empty cartons of Thai takeout between them and it all feels like everything is where they should be.

Slade has never claimed to be a good influence on the kid.

But he has to admit to being quite the bad one, not that he is about to stop himself, not when he has a hand around Jason’s wrist, feeling that steady pulse underneath his fingertips as he pulls him into his lap. Jason comes easy to him, fitting into place, one body falling heavily into another that can take the brunt of everything he can throw at him.

With Jason above him and more than willing to share some resemblance of normal human intimacy between Slade’s sheets, there are no protests, just an eager part of his lips to every single imploring kiss Slade presses to his mouth. Tasting of beer and cigarettes and this creeping sensation of one another neither of them has learned to quit.

It becomes a habitual thing they fall into.

They are sharing a cigarette.

Jason's brand of smokes isn’t the same as Slade’s but they still find themselves sharing one more often than not when they are all fucked out in Slade’s barren apartment after a twelve-hours night shift. The bedsheets are halfway to the ground and the blackout curtains are not doing much when neither one of them can bother with pulling them close.

The kid holds it between two fingers, wraps his lips around one end for an inhale. “Y’know, I never did quite like the taste of it.”

Slade doesn't do sentiments but Jason is looking so earnest, split clean down the center to bare his heart at him.

“Who was it then?” Slade asks even when he can probably guess. Hardly needs to be a detective when Jason has about three people in his life that gets him so tangibly tangled up like this.

“Mom was a smoker all her life.” His exhale is slow, holding it inside of his lungs until the burn gets too much. “The smell is nice.”

“Lung cancer is not.”

Jason turns towards him looking almost lost like he is only remembering his partner being in this small narrow place with him until just now.

“Speak for yourself, Slade.” Jason rolls over so he is draped halfway across Slade’s body. “Like that’s going to be the thing to put you in your grave.”

Slade moves because he doesn’t have a good retort to that, shifting with the weight and the heat of Jason pressing close to him and the ashes go scattering. Slade’s hiss only gets Jason smiling wider.

 

Laid out for him, Jason is on his back with Slade’s head between his thighs, tongue lapping at the head of his cock while he’s got one hand fisted around the base.

“Come on, Slade,” he breathes out on a ragged note, voice hoarse and almost at his limit when the man has brought him to the edge three times already and still not allowed him to come.

“What have I been saying about patience, kid?”

Jason groans, long and loud, wants to bang his head back against the headboard of the bed if Slade didn’t have him pinned to the soft mattress beneath them with barely any room to even twitch. “That I’ve got none?”

“Good boy,” Slade chuckles, the sound low and deep and Jason can feel it reverberating against the inside of his thighs as Slade’s hand brushes a broad stroke from the back of his knee to his ankle. “Got it in one.”

“I don’t get a reward for that?” Jason pants openly, his mouth gasping for breaths as Slade continues at his own pace, murmurs brat in between sucking a particularly large bruise against his hip.

Slade never goes easy on him but maybe that is exactly why Jason keeps coming back to him. Nothing ever comes easy, not that Jason expects it to. Taken outside the context of their work and everything that alone encompasses, they were never going to do anything differently even if they never became partners.

Jason reaches out to wrap his arms around the back of Slade’s neck, tugging him in with barely any strength. The blunt edges of his fingernails dig uselessly into Slade’s back, scratching dull long lines along his shoulder blades.

“Be nice,” Jason says like Slade isn’t already moving for him. “Soon enough, you won’t get to see me every day.”

Slade goes to him, follows through with the motion to let Jason bury his nose into his hairline where the stray silver strands are damp with sweat. Jason repeats himself, murmuring for his reward again like he’s a kid asking for another taste of something sweet.

It takes another long moment before Slade relents, giving Jason the reward he has been waiting for when he finally wraps a hand around them both, lifting up from the body pinned beneath his just enough so Jason can move. And he does, arching his back to set a pace that has him biting back soft little noises as he fucks into Slade’s fist. The grip Slade keeps on them both has Jason’s hips stuttering in their sway, back and forth until he is coming, spilling white all over Slade’s hand.

His chest is still heaving, the skin bright red from exertion when Slade follows. The mess sticky and hot between them, their mouths meeting in just the same way when Jason is opening up to touch his tongue against Slade’s.

They only ever talk about contingencies like it is something far off in the distance.

“Any words of advice?” Jason calls out when Slade is padding to the bathroom to get a wet washcloth to clean them both up.

They have put months and months of work in preparation for this operation, but to find themselves together the night before he is to go undercover is still quite a strange feverish dream when he is floating on this post-orgasmic bliss.

“If there’s only one thing you remember, remember this,” Slade tells him, sitting down at the edge with the bed dipping beneath his weight as he settles down next to Jason’s hips. “It’s your safety above anything else.”

Jason turns into the touch, turning towards the drag of the warm washcloth cleaning the grit of sweat and drying cum from his skin. “Even if he needs me to do something unforgivable?”

“It’s going to be unforgivable if you don’t come back in one piece.”

Slade is not about to ask the kid for any kind of promise, he is hardly that sentimental and it isn’t like Jason is about to listen to a thing he has to say.

“And how about you?”

“How much shit are you planning to stir up that you need me to step in?” Slade raises an eyebrow at him, tossing the washcloth to the nightstand before shoving Jason further into the bed for himself to lay down.

Jason laughs, moving just the slightest bit so he is still plastered against Slade's side. “So you’re not going to be my knight in shining armor?”

“You've got your own badge and gun, you can be your own damn knight in shining armor.”

Slade has called him a brat more times than he can count and Jason doesn’t let that deter him when he can reach out to pull Slade’s hands to him, rearranging the man to his own liking before he is closing his eyes, murmuring where’s the fun in that against Slade’s collarbones as he settles in for one more night.

 

His hiss gets louder and his whole body jerks involuntarily to the sharp pain that has him shouting blindly. The torture blurs minutes into hours into what could be days, Slade really can’t be clear on how long he’s been in Joker’s captivity when he is blacking out on and off with no recollection to the missing time in between.

“What’s this, boss? We killing cops now?”

A familiar voice breaks through the heavy fog in his head and thrusts him back under the bright lights and into a world of pain. Slade groans as he cracks open his one seeing eye, finding Quinn back at Joker’s side with a brand new group of men beside her, including one Jason Todd dressed in red for his name’s sake.

“Oh?” Joker chuckles, dangling a switchblade slick in Slade’s blood from a loose grasp. “Showing so much sympathy for these pigs now, are we, Red?”

If he looks half as bad as how he feels, Slade knows exactly what he must look like.

To Jason’s credit, the shock of seeing his partner bloody and strung up like an extra in a B-rated horror special doesn’t make him break his character. A quick assessing glance at Slade to make sure there aren’t any injuries requiring immediate medical attention, Jason scoffs before taking a step forward to spit at Slade.

“Hardly,” Red sneers before turning fully to Joker. “But GCPD raided three of our squads tonight, so excuse me if I don’t think we can afford to bring more heat on us by killing one of theirs.”

The grin on Joker’s face grows inhumanly wide, like he’s been waiting all night for someone to point that out.

“Thank you for mentioning that. In fact, the reason why I brought you all here tonight is because you were the only squads not ambushed by the GCPD… and I have a feeling that Officer Cyclops here knows the reason.”

Tension fills the air as the men murmur amongst themselves.

“I smell a rat. Oh yes, yes I do.” Joker weaves between them, sniffing dramatically, puffing his chest out as air fills his lungs. He drops the switchblade in one lackey’s palm and unholsters a gun from another before turning it to point at the group. “Confess now I’ll even consider keeping your corpse in one piece.”

All eyes are drawn to the barrel of the gun, and for once, even Harley is quiet as her eyes follow Joker’s movements.

“Was it you?” Joker twirls the gun to point it at a short blond man, a teenager really, before flicking the safety off. The warning is there for everyone to see, the henchman letting out a faint whimper only feeds into it. “I can smell the fear on you from the other side of the room.”

Jason takes a step forward and everyone turns to him, drawn like the needle of a compass to the north.

If Slade lives through this, Jason might not after the beratement Slade will drag the kid through because of all the things he’s drilled into Jason’s head, he only ever wanted this one to stick: Don’t fucking draw unwanted attention to yourself.

Slade holds his breath.

“What makes you think it’s one of us?” With the usual cocky smirk gone from his face, Jason asks with a casual shrug. “For all you know, the rat was part of one of the captured squads. Getting captured will just add to his credibility— the cops’ll just let him out later anyway.”

The clownish man grins and practically skips to Jason, drawing their distance almost down to zero. He nudges the muzzle of the gun against the young man’s forehead and uses it to nudge a few stray hairs of his bangs to the side—the motion would look affectionate if not for the gun. Jason allows himself to lean back slightly.

“You gotta use your head more, Red! Our big kaboom won’t happen until next week! The GCPD wouldn’t sideline a useful pawn before they’ve passed along the most important piece of information, would they?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“And that’s why I do all the thinking around here! You see, that Oinker there is going to tell us who’s working with him. Found him sniffing around Delta squad’s target even before they were due to attack.”

Everyone turns as Joker gestures to Slade, who’s still tied up and has been watching quietly this entire time. Joker lowers the gun and steps towards the bound man.

Behind him, Slade can see a flash of panic in Jason’s eyes. He tries to take shallow breaths, breathing past the pain of broken ribs to steady his racing pulse as the madman walks closer to him. He remembers the kid retelling the details of the cruel and gruesome things Joker has done to his own men, half of the time unprovoked and on a whim. Seeing it first-hand was enough to have Jason waking up in cold sweat once, pulling in painful little gasps in the middle of the night.

Slade remembers in vivid details because he spent a long time coaxing Jason back to closing his eyes, running a palm over the way the kid’s bare shoulders would shake as he tried to soothe the visceral fears into something more manageable.

Joker flashes both rows of his teeth as he notices the way Slade’s eye darts to the gun. “Oh, you’re worried about this, detective? Don’t be, this would just end the fun prematurely!” He chuckles as he holsters the gun only to flip out another switchblade from his back pocket. “There are much better alternatives.”

The rest of his gang crowds around in a semi-circle now and Slade forces himself to sound at ease.

“While it’s been amusing to listen to you lunatics bicker amongst yourselves, have you considered that you’re just not as good as you think you are? No need for a rat when you’ve been leaving all sorts of breadcrumbs for the GCPD to find. Bunch of amate—”

Before he can get the last syllable out, Joker punches him across the face with a closed fist. Slade grits his teeth at the force and the taste of blood that explodes in his mouth.

“Well, the way I see it, there are two possibilities here,” the terrorist leader explains while shaking his knuckles loose. “I could break every bone in your body until you tell me who the rat is. Or, if there is no rat, I still get to enjoy my favorite pastime of slicing pigs up into pretty red ribbons. Eh, sounds like a win-win situation to me either way!”

Joker raises the switchblade and runs a long slice down Slade’s thigh, exposing skin to leave a thin trail of fresh blood behind. Slade hisses in pain but his mind is calming. There is some morbid comfort in knowing how one will die, and he knows without a doubt that this psycho can cut him whichever way he fancies and he still wouldn’t reveal a thing.

There are some absolutes Slade holds certain, and Jason is one of them.

The kid can do the brave thing that he will and expose Joker’s grand plans, preventing the final attack. Slade supposes he can die peacefully knowing the thousands of lives he would be saving but really, Slade has been a selfish man his whole life and that still stands true now. He is light-headed from the blood loss, has been for a while now, and knows there is only one life he really cares about saving right now.

“Oh, we got a tough one here.” Joker claps his hands in excitement when Slade doesn’t give him the reaction he is looking for. He points the knife up, the tip of the blade an inch away from Slade’s one seeing eye. “Perhaps we should first carve out this eye to match your other one, hmm?”

“I think you’re forgetting a third possibility here, Joker.”

Everyone turns to the speaker and Slade lets out the breath he didn’t know he was holding as all eyes in the room turn towards Jason. Unperturbed by the heavy weight of the attention, Jason continues speaking over the hush silence that has fallen over the room.

“How about I blow your deranged brains out and walk out of here with the cop?”

Slade isn’t sure where Jason hid his gun but he doesn’t particularly care. Part of him is fucking pissed at the kid for revealing himself, he promised to keep himself safe no matter the circumstances and this right here is quite the opposite of just that. The other part of him is in complete agreement for Jason to just shoot the clown already.

“Really, Red?” The grin on Joker’s face grows even wider. “How much are they paying you to sell us out?”

"You pride yourself as a good judge of character, but you sure hit the jackpot when you recruited me, Joker. I'm not just an informant, I'm a fucking cop, and I have every reason to shut down this whole operation by ending it with you right here."

“So why don’t you?” Joker takes a step closer to him, completely unintimidated by the gun. “Surely, you’ve had plenty of opportunities in the past few weeks to shoot me in the back.”

Jason stays quiet so Joker takes the liberty to answer for him, making a show of it.

“It’s because you don’t have the authority to put me down, isn’t it? You can only report back to the upper brass with whatever information you can scrape together from here, so they can decide what to do. Law and order and all that shit.” He makes another wild gesture with his hand, the switchblade creating a wide arc in the air as he does. “Bet they’re willing to sacrifice a cop or two to burn this operation down to the ground but you wouldn’t know that, would you, good little foot soldier?”

Even if he is an insane one, Joker is a smart man. He knows exactly how his enemies work. Because out of all the bullshit he spews, he isn’t wrong.

“Tell you what, boy. I like your gumption, I’m gonna offer you a choice. Come work for me for realsies and be my inside man at the GCPD. I could use a cop on my payroll, and you’ll easily double, no, triple your take. Your first task would be to end this cop right here.”

“You’re right, Joker, my directions were to gather information, not kill you. And yeah, I’m sure the department would think the lives of a few cops make more than a fair trade for shutting down an operation of this scale.”

Without lowering his gun, Jason walks closer, maneuvering himself between Slade and Joker. Jason glances at him and Slade thinks he will remember the look on the kid’s face for the rest of his potentially very short life.

“But there’s something else you should know. This cop here, he’s my partner.” Jason takes a deep breath and smiles, his voice is steady and so are his hands. “And I wouldn’t sacrifice him for the whole world, least of all for you.”

 

He is desperately craving a hit, and the nicotine clinging in the space between them doesn’t help.

Slade is lying on a hospital bed, one arm hooked up to an IV while the other is held firmly in a cast. There are the soft sounds of the monitors beeping in the background that would have driven him up and down the walls if only he could move more than a couple of staggering steps. Slade has never taken to inactivity well and being laid up in bed for the second week since the whole debacle has only made it all the worse.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Slade tells him, and he makes sure he is unkind about it.

“That man deserved to die,” Jason replies from the visitor's chair with a shrug. He fired three shots into Joker’s chest, dead before he hit the ground. And in the chaos that erupts, Jason focused on getting Slade out instead of giving chase when Harley escaped with a bunch of other men in the confusion. “It was worth it and we both know it.”

“If they ever found out what you really did, your career is over. The department head will throw you to the wolves at internal over the botched operation and the media is going to crucify you for the police overreach, acting as judge, executioner, and all,” Slade sighs because he isn’t mad even if he probably should be. His chest aches with every breath but he needs the kid to understand the potential clusterfuck to come out of his decision. “Quinn’s leading the rest of Joker’s men and I heard they’re regrouping.”

Jason leans back against his chair but he doesn’t go far, settling right where Slade can see him with his one good eye like he hasn’t been in this hospital room as long as Slade’s been, read every single test results to come back like it’s his own.

“If they ask me for my badge after the internal investigation is done then so be it.” Jason starts slow, the words weighing heavy on his tongue like he is at a crossroad and this is the decision to matter. “We’ve both seen enough of this shit to know the terrorism against the city won’t stop. But neither will I, with or without the badge.”

Slade keeps still, notes the way Jason’s apathetic words can’t hide the sound of frustration bubbling through: This has been coming far longer than just this undercover assignment.

“And what exactly do you mean by that?”

“I know Joker’s people, I know their moves. I’ll hunt them down one by one if I have to.”

Even after all the times he’s had the kid in his bed and tangled up in his sheets confessing secrets and coming undone beneath him in every manner, Jason still manages to surprise him.

“What, and become some kind of lawless vigilante?” And it is a funny thing if Slade entertains the thought in any depth at all because he knows it is perfectly fitting for Jason’s sense of justice to be bigger than what the job allows. “You know they’ll just send me after you, right?”

Jason finally looks at him, holding his gaze as he drops a hand over Slade’s bandaged one to squeeze down hard. That vicious little grin of his drawing into full bloom when he finally gets a wince from Slade.

“Don’t be so sure about that, they might consider it a conflict of interest.”

**Author's Note:**

> Kuro: if it wasn’t for fleet, none of this would have happened and this fic would literally be half of what it is so an eternal thanks to fleet for reaching out to a social hermit like me and inviting me to do a collab of this caliber <33 Written for the day six prompts of Buddy cops AU/bound but not broken with a softer Slade who has a weak spot for young, hot things.
> 
> Fleet_of_red: Oh man, that’s a tough act to follow.


End file.
